Phoebe Kate

I was thinking the other day about all the things the gospels don’t mention about Jesus.  Seems to me that the most interesting parts, the little anecdotal recountings, the small details that would make him most human to us were carefully culled out by those in the early church who edited and collated the ancient manuscripts for our edification and the development of a Christian theology.  The result is a rather dry narrative of miracles, pious sayings and disjointed events in which the personhood of Jesus inevitably gets lost.

Although no documentation in scripture exists to back me up, I am 100% certain that Jesus was a great animal lover.  He had to have been — so many of the people around him, including his own followers, were frustrating, dense, irritating, unpredictable, preoccupied, erratic, moody, insensitive, self-absorbed and difficult to get along with.  I think he must have found comfort, solace and a simple companionship in the lesser creatures of his Father’s world. 

I’m sure he had pets he loved and took care of when he was a boy.  Fed plenty of hungry strays from the overflowing bounty of the loaves and fishes.  Stopped to scratch the cats behind their ears and throw sticks for the dogs he encountered on the road during his travels.  Took the time to find children’s lost kittens or puppies.  Slipped tasty tidbits to the pets under the table of every house he dined in.  Knew the name of the donkey who carried him on Palm Sunday and gave him a treat when the hoopla was all over.  

And there’s absolutely no question in my mind that throughout his life he rescued countless animals from human abuse and neglect.

That’s just the sort of savior he was.  And still is.

–phoebe kate

On Friday, at 12:12 P.M., I was abducted.

I was wandering around my kitchen and thinking vague thoughts about lunch, still attired in my Snoopy vs. the Red Baron sleep pants and one of my sons’ castoff surf shirts (it’s true — freelance writers really do sit at the computer all day long in what passes for their jammies), when I heard a dog barking outside the front door.  I don’t own a dog. 

I went to the door.  Opened it a crack.  The dog bolted inside.  My two cats scattered.  An entity whose face I didn’t get a chance to see grabbed me and said, “Don’t put up a fuss.  You’re coming with me.” 

Okay, the abductor didn’t communicate telepathically, so I knew it wasn’t an alien come to harvest some of us Terrans for experimentation and study. 

It was my sisterwoman Val and her Jack Russell terrier superdog Thompson, come to snatch me away from the 100 things I had on my to-do list.  Fortunately, she let me get properly dressed before she hauled my ass out of the house for an unplanned lunch on the waterfront and a day of boutique-shopping in Beaufort.

She is the only person in the world who can get away with springing surprises on me.  I am not a spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment type.  If I’m going away for a weekend, I start my planning and preparation a month ahead.  If someone gave my husband 2 tickets for Paris on a flight departing tonight, I’d look at him like he’s lost his mind and tell him to exchange them for reservations in, oh, maybe September, and he’d ask, of course, “September of what year, dear?”  Even my kids give me a few days notice when inviting me out for lunch or cocktails.  And surprise birthday parties?  You give me one and I may not speak to you again until I see Jesus coming in the clouds.

I can count on one hand the times I’ve dropped everything and done something unscheduled and unforeseen.  Like during a 6.5 earthquake when my house on the West coast gave every indication of falling down on my head.  Or when I went into precipitate labor with my first child and had to run to the nearest emergency room before I dropped everything.  Or the last time a Category 4 hurricane threatened the East coast and we were living on an island off NC with too many fellow residents, one main road and two long, narrow bridges to the mainland.  Hey, not even unadvertised word-of-mouth closeout sales of designer shoes can lure me at the last minute.

So how can Val do it?  Simply because she’s the sister this only child always wanted, but never dreamed of ever having.  No, we’re not blood kin, but that really doesn’t matter.  As Maya Angelou wrote, “I don’t believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers.  It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage.  Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.” 

Those people may be siblings or they may not.  The good news is that what biology may have denied you, fate and circumstance just might benignly conspire to grant you.  All that’s required is the dedication to work at it and let it happen. 

–phoebe kate

I noticed this morning that my sisterwoman Val, who is an artist, has a link to this amazing site on her blog Mental Kudzu.  Nix’s photography is surrealistic, disturbing, apocalyptic and pure genius.  Be sure to read the Introduction before you browse the art.  You’ll appreciate even more the depth of her work and its prophetic nature. 

Enjoy!

–phoebe kate 

Over the last thirty years, short fiction has mysteriously fallen out of favor.  The “glossies” like The New Yorker, Harper’s, Glamour, Seventeen and Esquire have cut back radically on the space they devote to them or ceased to publish them altogether.  And forget about getting a publishing house or literary agent interested in a short story collection — you stand a better chance of peddling a pork roast to a rabbi for Passover dinner.  

It’s enough to make O. Henry, Saki, Dorothy Parker, Edgar Allen Poe, Anton Chekhov, Raymond Carver, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Somerset Maugham, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Franz Kafka, Shirley Jackson, John Cheever and many, many others roll over in their graves.  Though they didn’t get rich from it, back in the day these writers were decently recompensed for writing short fiction for magazines. 

So who axed the genre?  The readers — or the publishers?  It would seem that in an era where everybody has too many things to do, no time to spare and a short attention span, short stories would be the ideal reading material: quick, easy, cheap — sort of like the literary equivalent of a perfect one-night stand.

And maybe that’s why short story writers receive little or no respect from publishing houses and agents.   Random House and HarperCollins and the like can’t get $24.95-plus a pop for a 150-page short story collection, but they can from a 500-page novel, no matter how mediocre it is, and maybe a Hollywood movie deal to boot. 

Writing a perfectly constructed short story is as challenging – or more so — than writing a full length work.  In a novel, you have thousands and thousands of words to tell your story.  The longer the work, the less brilliant the parts of it need to be.  It can sprawl and meander and you can babble and ramble, but if you’ve got a hot enough plot going (as in Dan Brown’s incredibly poorly written The DaVinci Code) readers may overlook all the clunky digressions, excess verbiage, inaccuracies, improbabilities and loose ends.  If every paragraph or chapter isn’t perfect, you can reasonably certain that nobody will notice, not even your editor. 

In writing short fiction, it’s really not a matter of being concise — it’s about being precise.  Every single word has to work or your whole illusional house of cards collapses — and the shorter the piece, the more this becomes vital.  It’s a delicate balancing act.  In a 5,000-7,000 word story, you’ve got some leeway — not much, but a little.  But in a 500-2,000 word story, you better nail it or you’re dead.

Today, short story writers (unless they happen to be Joyce Carol Oates or John Updike) get paid little or nothing for their efforts in the few markets that remain, most of which are now online.  The most I’ve ever been paid for a story was $50 and I was damn grateful.  I guess that makes me and my other writerly friends literary sluts, but we do what we do for love of the art and the vague hope that maybe it will work out well for us, monetarily speaking, sometime in the future. 

As short story writer par excellence Brett Lott so eloquently has stated in defense of the genre, “There is something about a short story…something beautiful and moving about holding in one’s hand a narrative, gem-like and perfect, that could be read in one sitting, opening its world before [our] very eyes and revealing its secrets in a small pocket of time that allowed [us] to go somewhere else and know something new.”  

And that says it all.  Thanks, Brett.

–phoebe kate                                    

While the old saying “the only bad publicity is no publicity” is true, there is a real danger in being too in-the-face of the public.  Here are 10 people I am sick of seeing and live in mortal dread of having to see for many more years.

1.     All the presidential nominees (Now I understand that if you’re running for office,  overexposure is inevitable.  But it can be overcome if you have an overabundance of personal charisma and powers of oratory persuasion.  Bill Clinton, in his two campaigns, is the most notable example of this ineffable combination.  Could you believe a word he said?  Hell no, but this highly polished and affable snake oil salesman could charm the pants off a nun.)     

2.     Bill Clinton (Because he’s lost all of the above attributes in stumping for his charismatically challenged and shrill wife.)

3.     Britney Spears

4.     Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana

5.     George Clooney  (definitely not the sexiest man on the planet and a crashing bore to boot)

6.     Dr. Phil

7.     Sarah Jessica Parker (Sorry, my dear, but your continued whining about being crowned Maxim’s Unsexiest Woman in the World last October is soooooo unbecoming.  It was seven months ago — get over it already.  Count your millions and be thankful that adorable husband of yours thinks you’re sexy.)  

8.     Donald Trump  (If your ex-wives can’t stand to look at your face, why do you think the viewing public can?) 

9.     Rachael Ray (You’re just spiffy-keen as a chef on The Food Network, but trying to sell yourself as a talk show host  and this hawking of crackers and cookbooks and cookware and Burger King and Price Chopper and all is going too far, kid.  And making the dictionary for EVOO is the last straw.)

10.   American Idol (All of ‘em and the judges, too.  I just read today that first class postage stamps are being issued that feature the faces of Idol stars.  Now if that isn’t taking undeserved overexposure to the max, I don’t know what is.) 

–phoebe kate